Age: 65
male
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh (born 10 December 1960) is a Northern Irish actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 2012 and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times's list of Ireland's greatest film actors. Branagh has directed and starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), and As You Like It (2006). He was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director for Henry V and Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamlet. He directed Swan Song (1992), which earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. He also directed Peter's Friends (1992), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Thor (2011), and Cinderella (2015). For his semi-autobiographical film Belfast (2021), he was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Director and won Best Original Screenplay. Branagh directed and starred as Hercule Poirot in the Hercule Poirot film series (2017–present). He has also acted in Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), and Valkyrie (2008). His portrayal of Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn (2011) earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He played supporting roles in Christopher Nolan's films Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020), and Oppenheimer (2023). Branagh has starred in the BBC1 series Fortunes of War (1987), the Channel 4 series Shackleton (2002), the television film Warm Springs (2005), and the BBC One series Wallander (2008–2016). He received a Primetime Emmy Award and an International Emmy Award for Best Actor for portraying SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in the HBO film Conspiracy (2001).
Kenneth Branagh
Yacek Thess
for Yacek Thess in Star Wars: The Divine Sundering
Suggested by simonlynfl
Chaos spreads across the Galactic Republic. Once a bastion of peace, it has become riddled with corruption, as Crime Syndicates manipulate the Senate from the shadows. Senators beg the Jedi for help, but the Order, led by Grand Master Hemlin Coturk, refuses to intervene, holding fast to the Code. A faction of dissenting Jedi, led by Patren Shal, disagrees. Patren not only thinks that the Jedi must intervene, but too believes that, the only way to defeat the syndicates is to tap into the forbidden texts. Patren's followers, many young and ambitious, quickly grow in strength, spreading fear and corruption even within the Order itself. Seeing the lingering threat among these fallen Jedi, Grand Master Coturk and a handful of Masters go into their huts and eliminates each member, one by one; silently. Initially, these dark Jedi do not understand what is going on, though when they do, Patren rallies them, to take one last stand against the "weak," Jedi. Many dark Jedi die in this fight, but Patren, his apprentice, Lyssa Manin, and closest friend, Quarven Starros, survive. They flee into the unknown regions, training in secret, honing their mastery of the dark side, determined to one day seek revenge on the Jedi Order. Fearing the Dark Jedi will seize control of the galaxy, the Council makes a painful decision: the Jedi abandon their remote sanctuaries, including Ahch-To, and relocate to Coruscant. Drawn into the heart of galactic politics, they must safeguard freedom while confronting the shadows rising within their own ranks.
